Category Archives: Canadian

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Self-described as “music for being alone on the Internet at 3 am,” Canadian Nevrmind’s Dream Volume evokes the feeling of an empty dance floor, blurred eyes pink from the glow of an exit sign, feeling the weight of a watered-down mixed drink sloshing against the sides of a plastic cup, unencumbered by a coat and purse long gone missing.

At its simplest, Dream Volume is a moody 5-track album of ambient, electronic dance music. But ingested after midnight, Dream Volume enters a wifi state of mind, constantly reloading and refreshing, geotagging to a nearby café in Chinatown, toggling to someone else’s iPhone, dancing as though someone is watching, cropping for later. Listen late.

Something warped is in the Peterborough water. I say this with the deep affection of someone whose family tree’s roots have been slurping the groundwater for 80 years.

Brandon Munro’s delicately wonky wanderings on Armgods were written in February for the RPM Challenge (10 songs or 35 minutes in 28 days). With looped & detuned electric guitar lines, relaxed toms, and slightly hoarse, removed vocals, this is a solid bedroom pop album just begging for an electronic remix.

Relaxing, unpretentious, and easy, Armgods reminds me of a nursery mobile spinning with bent plastic arms, drooping so low into the cradle that the pilled, dangling zoo animals graze the mattress with every rotation.

Plant Material is Toronto experimental electronic musician Jess Forrest‘s 7-track love letter to her apartment’s large-n-luscious house plant collection. The album idea sparked after legendary taper/music curator Joe Strutt asked her to play his Music Gallery show, EMERGENTS III—Joe told Jess to play, “anything she wanted,” and the concept was born.

Castle If’s previous releases are messages received and decoded from the endless drone of deep space—colourful Moog Lil’ Phatty nebulas flanked by milky way Oberheim oscillations, all dubbed to deliberately hissy tape. With Plant Material, Jess returns to earth—or more precisely, she reaches her hands down into the mossy loam of her plant pots, scoops up mineral-rich handfuls, and watches the dark grains of soil tumble back down onto the glossy leaves.